


Trust Me

by alexygalaxy



Series: Widojest Week 2019 [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Healing, Mild Gore, Mutual Pining, OH fair warning there is one kinda nasty bit in ch 1 where i describe an injury, also lots of shirtless caleb, gratuitous amounts of sex jokes, i dont Think theres any spoilers in this one except maybe a brief mention of ep 45, inaccurate description of beeswax salve making
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 10:45:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19744099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexygalaxy/pseuds/alexygalaxy
Summary: Jester is a healer and Caleb just seems to keep having injuries for her to heal.





	1. trust me, and i will heal you

**Author's Note:**

> here y'all go ... widojest week day 2: healing!!
> 
> yesterday i was only able to post a couple chapters of smth so today have a complete and Chungy work. i hope it is sufficiently tender and sweet for your liking. 
> 
> also special thanks to [celebreultimaverba](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celebreultimaverba/pseuds/celebreultimaverba) for being my unofficial beta reader and reassuring me that i didn't spend too much time on shirtless caleb. check out her work if ur horny for cr bc she's an Amazing writer!!
> 
> enjoy!!!!

Caleb opened his eyes into the grey light of dawn, awoken by the patter of rain across his face. Of all the ways to be woken up, by rain was one he didn’t actually mind too much. It had been a while though, since it had happened, because the Mighty Nein usually managed to sleep in an inn or the … hut. They were in the hut right now, Caleb was sure of it, he _distinctly_ remembered the ten minutes he had spent ritual casting it last night. Rain shouldn’t be getting in, then, which must mean that either something happened to the hut, or he has been asleep for far too long. Or it’s not actually raining. 

He brought a hand to his face, fingers met with the odd yet distinctive texture of multi-sized spots of smooth metal. He drew his palm across his cheek, sending the spots tumbling and clinking to the ground. Giggles sprouted from somewhere out of sight as he rolled over onto his good side, sending another torrent of metal sliding off of his chest. He glanced at the ground as he pushed up into a nearly-sitting position. 

Buttons. There was a small pile of buttons strewn across the ground, having previously been strewn across him. He picked one up and examined it, determining that it was from Nott’s stash. Before he had a chance to struggle to standing and attempt to locate the goblin, the giggles pealed out again. 

“Good morning, Cayleb,” Jester called out, catching Caleb’s gaze as he turned towards the source of the laughter. She and Nott were sitting on a bed roll together, Nott’s small bag of buttons open and nearly empty in front of them. Caleb, still groggy and not quite capable of speech, simply held up the button he had grabbed in Jester’s direction with an expression on his face that he hoped conveyed “why?”

“I was on watch with Nott and she was showing me her buttons, and then one, uh, accidentally fell on you and you didn’t wake up, so we wanted to see how many we could throw at you before you would notice,” Jester explained, grinning. “It was a lot, we lost count.”

“I’ll be needing those back, by the way,” Nott added, already moving towards Caleb with the bag.

“Oh, and also I have my spells back now,” Jester said. “That’s why I wanted to wake you up, cause I can try to heal your shoulder.”

As Jester spoke, she pointed at the bandages peeking out from Caleb’s shirt. He glanced down at them, brushing a hand over them instinctively. He winced, immediately regretting the decision.

  
  
After the battle yesterday, both clerics had been completely tapped. When Caleb had been struck by a hunk of falling rock as the group retreated from the collapsing cavern, neither of them had any healing spells left to spend. Caduceus had managed to wrap Caleb’s shoulder to keep it from getting infected and to staunch some of the blood, but he had said it would need further attention in the morning. 

Jester stood, taking a little jump over her own bed roll and dancing around Nott as she made her way to Caleb’s side. Settling down, she pulled open the drawstring of the pink haversack, rummaging inside for a medic’s kit. She removed a roll of bandages and what appeared to be some kind of salve, setting them aside. She then reached down to her own symbol of the Traveller, giving it a quick rub for good luck before tugging at the hem of Caleb’s shirt.

  
  
“Off,” she said.

“Pardon?” Caleb’s eyebrows rose in surprise at the command.

“I can’t dress your wounds with your shirt on Caleb, take it off,” she said. “No one is even up yet except for me and Nott so no one’s going to look at you, but also everyone in this hut has seen your dick at least once so it’s not like you really have anything to hide.”

“ _I_ won’t even look,” said Nott, dropping the last buttons into her pouch and clapping her hands across her eyes for show. “It’ll just be Jester, and you with no shirt on.”

“Thank you, Nott,” Caleb said, and shot Nott a rather heavy amount of side eye, fighting off a blush. Thankfully, Jester was focused on arranging her medical supplies, or else she would have teased him for that look, and then he would have _definitely_ turned bright red. 

Caleb started with his coat, shaking his right sleeve off, and then tugging the left sleeve down gingerly. He folded the coat over his arm once, twice, and set it off to the side. Fumbling one-handed, he began to pull at the hem of his shirt, but - gottverdammt - it was fairly fitted and he didn’t have a lot of room in the armpits to maneuver, and the amount of jostling he had already done was sending pain shooting down his injured arm.

“Jester, I -” he sighed, defeat apparent in his tone. “I need help. My shoulder, I am sorry, I cannot -”

“Shh, Caleb, it’s fine.” Jester shushed him, cutting him off. “I got it.” She grabbed at the fabric, taking it gently from Caleb’s hand as she lifted up. 

It was a little weird, Jester had to admit, taking Caleb’s shirt off. Not because she didn’t want to see Caleb shirtless; no, she _definitely_ wanted to see that. She had imagined it plenty of times, as she was trying to fall asleep, or while trying to pass time riding on the moorbounders. But when she did, they were always like, making out and it was really hot, and she ripped his shirt off super quick between kisses. Or like, he would walk into her room wearing his coat but nothing under it. Or they would be back on the beach in Nicodranas again, and he would be walking out of the waves after a swim, tossing his head back as he shook his hair out of his eyes, and his chest would still be a little wet, and it would shine in the sunlight as he walked towards her in slow motion. That last one was one of her personal favorites, if she was being honest. 

But she had never thought about what it would be like to actually _take it off_. It was always before, then after. Now that she was doing the inbetween, in real life, with no imagination to prepare her, it was a little weird. 

For example, she wasn’t expecting Caleb to stifle a giggle as her fingertips brushed his sides. It was cute, and she didn’t mind it at all, but it did throw her off a little bit. She didn’t know he was ticklish. And she wasn’t expecting him to crinkle his face up as she guided the neck of his shirt over his head. His eyes were all squinched shut, and his nose was wrinkled up too, and she thought about leaning over to kiss it before remembering that she was just fixing his shoulder and that’s it. She wasn’t expecting their hands to meet as they both reached for his amulet at the same time to keep it from coming off. She especially didn’t expect to have to place a hand on his exposed stomach to steady him as she tried to guide the shirt over his basically immobile shoulder.

  
Caleb’s stomach, Jester noticed, was really pretty smooth. In all the books she had read, they always talked about men’s stomachs as “rock hard” and “rippling”, and they always had huge six packs like Beau or Yasha did. But Caleb wasn’t a strength fighter, and his stomach was a lot more gentle than she had imagined it being. 

He had a little muscle, which was lean and tense under her touch, but his skin was soft. It was warm against her palm, and she understood why Frumpkin liked kneading it so much. The natural shadows were darkened further by the morning light, just now peeking into the hut. There was no hot sun to make him sweat and glisten or to reflect off the ocean water but she didn’t actually care. She liked it this way. It looked more real, more like _him_ and less like a man from one of her novels with Caleb’s face shoved on top. She would have liked to leave her hand there for a bit and just feel his breath rise and fall under it, while she studied the way it looked.

Then again, there was a little trail of hair at the lower part of his stomach, below his belly button and between where his hip bones peeked out above his pants. Her pinky finger was nearly touching it, and it started seeming like one of her fantasies again. She began to document this image in her mind to remember at night and maybe even draw in her sketchbook. She could reach over so easily, run her hand down it, or maybe even press a kiss or two to it and - 

“Ow, ow, Jester, ow, shoulder, ow,” Caleb groaned. Ok, _that_ part wasn’t getting remembered for later.

“Fuck, Caleb, sorry,” Jester murmured, shaking her head out of her reverie and guiding the shirt the rest of the way off his injured shoulder, far more carefully this time. She had _got_ to stop being so easily distracted.

Tugging it from his wrist, she pulled the sleeves right side out before folding it loosely and placing it atop his coat. She turned back towards him, focusing on his shoulder and only his shoulder, and the bandages Caduceus had wrapped around it last night. Blood was beginning to soak through.

“Hold still,” she muttered, fingers pulling out the tucked in tail of the bandage. She unwound it slowly, taking great care not to jostle the joint any more than she already had. The wound underneath slowly revealed itself to her, and she couldn’t help but feel a little bile rise in her throat. It was nearly as deep as it was wide, edges jagged from where the sharp bit of rock had torn into the muscle. Jester was no master of anatomy, but she was pretty sure that some things were severed that were supposed to be connected. A trickle of blood was oozing from the cut as she looked it over. 

“That bad, is it?” Caleb asked in response to the tensing of her face.

“It’s … pretty gross, Caleb. But I’m taking care of it.”

Placing two fingers at the skin around the gash, Jester gripped her holy symbol and whispered the words that had become intimately familiar to her these past few months. Her fingers buzzed with energy, pulled from somewhere deep inside her and pulsing into Caleb. The blood flow came to a stop, and some of the deep muscle tears began to knit together. But the gash was far from closed when the tingle began to fade, leaving her fingers with the slightly numb sensation she always had after a heal.

  
  
“It’s, uh, not working,” she said, brow furrowing as she leaned back from Caleb. “Well, it’s working a little bit, but not all the way. You still have a hole in you.”

“I have a lot of holes in me, Jester,” Caleb shot back, wry smile cracking his face and forcing a giggle out of her too. His face quickly fell back into its usual stern expression as he continued. “Perhaps the, ah, natural healing is getting in the way. Have you ever healed old wounds before?”

“No,” Jester answered after a moment of thought. “It’s always been right after people got hurt. I also didn’t use a lot of magic, sorry, but that worm thingy cleared both clerics out yesterday and it could still _technically_ burrow through the ground at any time and I don’t want to run out of spells again. NOT that I don’t think you’re worth magic, Caleb, but ... I want to make sure I have enough left in case I need to use Revivify.”

“Teckanickally,” Caleb said, mimicking Jester’s accent, “you did not have to cast anything on me at all, so I am already indebted to you for this. Thank you.”

“I still wish I could do more,” Jester said. She opened the tin of salve and dipped her fingers inside, spreading it around the outside of the wound. Caleb winced, sucking air through his teeth, and she mumbled an apology. 

“You can - ah - try again - ow - later,” Caleb suggested, grimacing as she pulled the first layer of bandage tight against his chest. He’s almost glad that he’s in a lot of pain right now, because he was thinking about that instead of the fact that Jester was running her hands across his bare chest. If he thought too hard about that second thing, he would be required to die, or at the very least, walk away from the group and yell for a bit, which he couldn’t do because he was maintaining the hut. 

“Mmmokay,” she agreed, tearing the bandage off and tucking the loose end behind a piece she had already wrapped, patting it (gently) for good measure. “Fixed!” she announced. “Now, you just need your shirt back on, and then you can go back to sleep or work on your books or whatever else it is you like to do in your room alone all the time.”

He said nothing, but wiggled his eyebrows, leaving his reply up to implication.

“Gross, Caleb!” Jester squealed, grin splitting her face. “If you’re going to do that, at least use your good arm. I’m _not_ going to Cure Wounds on a jack off injury.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Lavorre. I’ll wait,” he answered, chuckling heartily.

Jester reached down to grab Caleb’s shirt and flicked him with it, giggling non-stop. He smacked it away, and raised his good arm to shield his face from more shirt attacks. Even with his hand in the way, Jester could tell he was smiling just as wide as her. Well, nearly as wide, since seeing Caleb as happy as he was made her own grin grow.

“Can I look yet?” Nott called, very pointedly, shaking the two of them back to reality. 

“One second, Nott,” Jester replied, rushing to slide the sleeves down Caleb’s arms and stretch the neck hole over his bowed head. It was a lot quicker putting it on than taking it off, though much of that may have stemmed from the fact that Jester was too embarrassed to give Caleb another eyefuck. 

“Thank you again, Jester,” Caleb said, slipping his arms into the coat she was holding open for him. 

“Of course, Caleb!” Jester’s smile was small, but genuine. “And if we aren’t all dead or out of spells tonight, I’ll give you another heal, or change your bandages at the very least.”

“Much appreciated.”

“You can open your eyes now, Nott,” Jester said, scrambling to scoop the supplies back into the med kit. Telling herself she would reorganize it later, she squeezed the lid shut and dropped it hastily into the bag of holding. She scooted back across the hut towards her own bed roll, face focused directly on the ground as it flushed deep purple. 

Sitting back on her own blanket, she glanced across the hut to see Caleb slowly lowering himself down, presumably to get a little more rest before the sun’s light grew bright enough to rouse the rest of the group. She placed the haversack at her feet, and began to settle in for the rest of her watch.

As her she folded her legs in to sit, Beau - whose bed roll was next to Jester’s, as always - cracked her eyes open a smidge. 

“Good lord,” she whispered to Jester. “Have Caleb figure out how to make a side hut next time.”

Jester shushed her frantically, glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one else, especially not Caleb, had heard the comment.

“I’m just saying,” Beau just said, turning over to put her back to Jester.

Jester huffed as she placed her chin on her hands, ready to finish watch and fantasize about Caleb’s stomach for the last half hour or so before the sun rose and the Mighty Nein awoke to another, probably terrifying, day. 


	2. trust me, and i will love you

That evening, Jester attempted another heal of Caleb, getting a similar result. The wound closed somewhat, deep tissue sewing back up but still leaving a sizeable chunk missing from the wizard’s shoulder. She repeated this process each morning and most evenings, dropping a small heal and watching the cut ever inch its way closed, with various degrees of teasing and staring at Caleb shirtless depending on who else was in the immediate vicinity. After about a week, she saw the skin on the surface seal together with not so much as a scar left in its wake. 

“Caleb!” Jester exclaimed, voice brimming with pride and excitement, “I did it! It’s gone! Your shoulder is good again!”

“Oh. Is it?” he asked, as if he wasn’t already looking down at the place where his shoulder wound once was.

“Don’t sound so disappointed Caleb,” Jester said, poking the healed skin jokingly. “What, did you _want_ me to have to keep getting my hands all over you to heal you every day?”

An awkward silence fell between the two of them as Caleb moved his head halfway up, as though he was going to answer, then stopped himself and let it fall back down. Jester’s cocky grin faltered as she watched. The fact that he hadn’t just said ‘no’ threw her. 

“Well, uh, let me get your sh-shirt,” Jester said, fumbling over words in an attempt to relieve the tension that had so quickly built up in their space.

“I can do it,” Caleb said, voice uncomfortably emotionless, reaching to snatch his shirt before Jester could get to it. He began to pull it on, struggling a little as he was still wary of using his newly healed shoulder. Jester knew better than to try and help with it, though. He stood abruptly, not bothering to put on his coat, but simply grasping it in one hand and letting it drag through the dirt behind him as he walked. 

Halfway between Jester’s bed roll and his own, he stopped. He turned back over his shoulder, expression softer than it had been a few moments ago. He said, “Thank you, Jester. Truly,” before continuing the rest of the way and sitting down on his blanket. 

Jester packed up her med kit in silence, sneaking glances at Caleb every couple of seconds. He was staring at his books with extreme dedication, eyebrows furrowed as he pored over pages she was sure he had already memorized. He was clearly in one of his broody states, where he didn’t want to talk to anyone because he was so sure he was terrible and didn’t deserve to be around the rest of the group no matter how much they all protested and said he was an ally and a friend, and the idea of Jester’s healing seemed to have been what put him there.

Which is why Jester was utterly shocked when, the next evening, she heard footsteps nearing her bed roll and looked up from her sketchbook to see Caleb standing next to her, rubbing at his shoulder. 

“Jester, I am sorry to bother you but, ah, could you take a look at it again?” 

Jester closed her sketchbook, setting it aside and patting the blanket in front of her as a signal for Caleb to sit down. “I thought it healed all the way, did it open up again or something?” she asked.

“Nein, but it still hurts to move, sometimes. I cannot lift it very high,” Caleb explained, lowering himself into the spot she had pointed out.

“Oh, well, I just sent a bunch of Sendings to my Mama, and I don't have any spells left since I didn’t think you were going to be coming back.” Jester toyed with her horn as she talked, avoiding Caleb’s gaze. She was a little ashamed of herself even though, logically, she would not have had any reason to save spells.

“That’s alright,” he said. “Do you have any of that salve still? I think it may still help to put some on.”

“Oh, ah, sure,” Jester said, reaching for the haversack and pulling the med kit out. She opened it up, rummaging for the tin. She hummed happily as she found it, popped the lid off and held it out to Caleb. “Here!”

Caleb made no move to take it, and Jester shook it back and forth a little bit in case he had somehow missed seeing it. 

“I thought you would ... “ Caleb started, letting the sentence trail off. Jester’s brow furrowed slightly, and he rushed to explain. “You are a healer, and I very much am not. I don’t want to mess up any of your supplies. You do not have to, of course, I will be okay if you would rather not.”

“No, no,” Jester said, drawing the hand holding the salve slowly back towards her. “I can - I can do it.” 

“Danke,” he mumbled, tugging up his shirt.

Watching Caleb take off his shirt was a little weird, Jester thought, especially after having done it herself every other time she was doing healer things with him. But then again, Jester wasn’t one to say no to a show. 

She scooted closer to Caleb as he set his shirt to the side, sitting on her shins in front of him. She dipped her fingers into the salve, scooping out a sizeable blob and pressing it to Caleb’s bare skin. His bare, smooth, soft skin. With no more nasty cut in it, just his normal skin, dappled in freckles, that Jester was running her hands across right now. For healing purposes, of course. That was the only reason. Because Caleb had said that his shoulder hurt, and she was a cleric, and so she was brushing her fingers across his shoulder and part of his chest, his chest with no shirt on it, because that’s what clerics did. 

Clerics also definitely looked down at the faces of their patients instead of at the site of the injury as they were working, because their patient’s eyes were closed and they looked oddly peaceful. They definitely compared the freckles dusting the bridge of their patient’s nose with the ones on their patient’s shoulders, and saw that the nose ones were smaller and darker. And clerics definitely had to resist pressing a kiss to the nose freckles, and instead settle for drawing their fingertips across the shoulder freckles one last time, lingering for an extra moment before dropping their hand and wiping the extra salve off on their skirt. All clerics definitely did that. 

Jester cleared her throat; both as a reminder to herself that she was still in the middle of the hut with everyone else ten feet away, and because she did not trust her voice to stay normal-sounding if she talked to Caleb to tell him he was free to go. It seemed to work. Caleb mumbled another “thank you” and pressed a hand to his shoulder, presumably to see if the salve was helping with the pain, although she would have expected him to press a little harder if he was trying to test the muscle. Right now he was just matching his fingers to where hers had been. 

She held his shirt out to him, still silent, and he took it from her. Slipping it back on, he gathered himself and began to stand up once more. Mid-crouch, he froze, gaze lifting to meet Jester’s as she called, almost impulsively, “Come back tomorrow if it still hurts to lift, ok? I have more rubby stuff left.” To accentuate her point, she picked up the tin of salve and shook it in her hand. 

“Much appreciated. I will do so,” Caleb said, rising the rest of the way to standing as he turned and headed back to his own corner of the hut, still brushing a hand over his shoulder through his shirt.

* * *

  


“I’m out of the rubby stuff Caleb. Sorry,” Jester said, at the end of another week of treating Caleb’s shoulder with the salve. “Maybe you can go ask Caduceus, he probably has some in his bag, or maybe he has some mushrooms that he can grow all over you or something.”

“Oh, nein, it is okay. I do not want to bother him,” Caleb replied from his position at the foot of Jester's bed roll. 

Jester's eyebrows rose in mock incredulation. “But you’re totally fine bothering me?”

“You are very fun to bother.”

"Oh, am I?"

"Ja. You are. I might go so far as to say I enjoy bothering you."

"Tsk, tsk, Caleb,” Jester responded, shaking her head as an exaggerated reprimand. She was only half-joking as she turned on the sultriness for her next line. “Didn't anyone teach you it's terribly rude to get a lady all _bothered_ and not do anything about it?"

"Oh, ja, but I _am_ terrible, so I do it anyways.” Caleb was grinning thievishly as he spoke. Jester could have sworn that he also winked, but it was so quick she couldn’t be sure if she just _wanted_ him to have winked.

At that, Jester’s face contorted into a (clearly fake) scowl. She stuck her tongue out at Caleb, which caused him to laugh. She responded with a light smack on his knee while stifling her own laughter. He quickly returned a jab to her shoulder, so of course she had to lean back on her hands and use her foot to poke him in the stomach. When Caleb tucked his own knees in to use as a shield, snickering, the only thing for Jester to do was toss her pillow at him. Unfortunately, she was laughing hard enough that it threw off her aim, allowing Caleb to dodge it then snatch it from her reach.

"Beau I need your pillow please thank you!" Jester said, voice high with excitement as she snagged the pillow from the bed roll next to her.

Holding it in front of her defensively, she peeked around the side, gauging Caleb's next attack and ignoring Beau's grumbles of protest from across the hut, where she had been chatting with Fjord. She saw Caleb holding his pillow similarly, and decided to pause for a moment in hopes of catching him by surprise. Instead, an arm with blue wraps reached over Caleb’s shoulder and yanked the pillow from his grasp.

“Why do you hate fun, Beauregard?” he asked.

“Because you two fucks forgot that we’re technically outdoors, and you’re gonna get mud all over the pillow that I need to go to sleep on in like twenty minutes,” Beau said, holding the pillow above her head to keep Caleb from taking it back.

“Jester has the one that is technically yours, though.”

“Jester is also strong enough to give me a run for my money in a fistfight. You, on the other hand, would probably fall over if I ran past you at full speed. I pick my battles wisely.”

“Fair. Rude, but fair.”

“‘Rude but fair’ is my middle name.”

“I thought your middle name was Lillith.”

“Hey, fuck you, I told you that in confidence,” Beau said, beaning Caleb square in the face with the pillow before bringing it back across the hut with her for safekeeping while she finished her conversation with Fjord.

“Don’t worry, Caleb,” Jester piped up, “I’ll go grab Nott’s for you. She doesn’t really sleep on it anyways so I don’t think she’ll throw a fit if it gets a little dirty.” 

Jester pushed herself to standing, ready to traipse over to Nott’s bed and snag another pillow for herself. She tossed the one she currently held towards Caleb, but misjudged the angle and sent it well over his head. Before she could call “sorry!”, the pillow stopped in mid-air, held aloft by Caleb in an overhead, two-handed catch. Two-handed.

Jester froze mid-turn, staring at Caleb with the injured arm - that he had claimed he couldn’t lift - stretched completely up. Her mouth dropped open in surprise and she noticed his brow furrow, mistake realized. 

“Oh, ah, ow,” Caleb fumbled, dropping his arms and grabbing half-heartedly at the injured shoulder. 

“It’s not even injured, is it, Caleb?”

He avoided her gaze as he mumbled, “I guess your rubby stuff must have worked.”

Jester had no response for him. She really hadn’t minded giving Caleb the stuff for his shoulder every night, and he had been insistent that she not waste any healing spells on him if it wasn’t necessary, so she had absolutely nothing to be upset about. And she _wasn’t_ upset. She was more bewildered. Why would he keep coming back if his arm hadn’t been hurting? It’s not like Jester was all that good at non-magical healing. Caduceus was far better than her with herbs and bandages and those sorts of things. Which meant Caleb had been sitting through subpar healing sessions for absolutely no reason at all, watching Jester make a little bit of a fool of herself and using up time that he could have spent poring over his books. Was he like, trying to give her practice or something? But it wasn’t like Caleb to be cagey about something like that, if he thought she needed practice he would have said it to her face. 

As Jester’s thoughts raced, she became aware that standing unmoving in the middle of the hut, staring at Caleb in shock had attracted the attention of her friends, who were now staring at both Caleb _and_ her in silent confusion. 

“Are you two … good?” Fjord called after a few seconds.

“Yeah, we are,” Jester replied.

“Ja, ja, all good,” Caleb answered at the same time. He stood, attempting to shrink into his coat as he walked back to the edge of the hut where he kept his own bed roll. He slumped down and cracked open one of his books, a clear signal to anyone who knew him to leave him alone. 

“You don’t have to stare,” Jester said to the sea of questioning faces, sitting back down and burying herself in her sketchbook in a similar fashion. 

She waited until she felt the eyes move away from her and heard conversation slowly seep back into the hut to try and sneak a look at Caleb. He was already staring at her when she turned to check. Their gazes met for just a second before they broke away, faces reddening into their respective books. After a while, Jester’s eyes wandered over the haversack. Somewhere inside, there was a tin of salve that was totally empty, for what was apparently no reason at all. That was no good, she thought. She would have to ask Caduceus to help her make more. 

* * *

  


“What’s that one?”

“Comfrey.”

“And what about that one?”

“Turmeric.”

“And that one?”

“Vervain. And the one after that is Yarrow, since I think you’re going to ask.”

“I _was_ going to ask, Caduceus, how did you know?”

“I’m very good at finding patterns in people.”

Jester sat next to Caduceus in the hut, a cloth spread out on the ground in front of them, on which Caduceus had laid a variety of herbs and plants. There was also one of the honeycombs from the bee lady when they were pirates, a small mortar and pestle, a few bowls, and the empty tin of salve from Jester’s healing kit. Jester had taken the time to sketch and label each of the herbs so she could keep an eye out for them to add to Caduceus’s stash, and she then informed him that she was ready to learn how to make the rubby stuff. 

“Well, it starts with a lot of grinding,” Caduceus said, passing Jester the mortar and pestle along with a handful of turmeric root. “We’ve got to powder this up.”

Jester accepted them eagerly, squishing the root down with the pestle. Her face screwed up in concentration as she pressed and twisted on the root, attempting to break it up into a fine powder. After about thirty seconds, she set the mortar down and tossed her head back. 

“It’s taking so loooong, Caduceus,” she groaned.

“It does take a while, yes,” he replied.

“How do you do this all the time?”

“I find it relaxing.” He grinned down at her and made no move to save Jester from her fate of grinding, so she reluctantly took the mortar back into her grip and continued to smash at the turmeric root. 

“Can we at least talk or something, so it’s not as boring?” Jester asked.

“Certainly. What would you like to talk about?”

“Well, I can always talk about the Traveller and how cool he is. Or you could like, tell me about your siblings cause you never say anything about them but I want to know. Or …. Oh, oh! Or you could tell a ghost story from when you worked at the graveyard, did you ever see any ghosts or zombies or anything?”

“Nah. No ghosts, no zombies. I did accidentally get buried once, though.”

“What? No way!”

“Yes, my sisters did it, actually. Would you like to hear about it?”

“Uh, like, totally!”

Caduceus began to talk, his low voice rumbling through their corner of the hut and making the act of grinding up roots bearable. She finished the turmeric, moving onto the yarrow, then the comfrey, and then the vervain. Next, Caduceus showed her how to heat the honeycomb with Sacred Flame so the wax would drip out into a bowl, and then how to keep it warm while they strained it through cloth several times, into a clean bowl, until the dirt had been all sifted out. Understandably, this process was rather arduous, and Jester felt the silence and monotony begin to weigh on her once again.

“Caduceus?” she asked, while holding a cloth taught over the mouth of a bowl as he poured.

“Yes, Miss Jester?”

“You said you were good at like, figuring out patterns in people and what they mean?”

“I would like to believe that I am.”

“So, do you know what it means when someone, like,” Jester paused as she weighed her words. “When someone makes you do things for them that they don’t actually need done?”

“You mean purposely wasting your time?” Caduceus prompted.

“No, no. That’s not it. I don’t think they’re doing it to be mean, really. They just have been asking me to help them with something that they don’t need help with.”

“Ah, that’s different. Next bowl please,” he said, motioning for Jester to move the cloth and beginning to pour again. “That sounds more like an excuse to spend time with you. Which is probably a sign that they like you.”

“Oh.” Jester paused for a moment. “You mean like me, or _like_ like me?”

“I don’t know how saying it twice changes the meaning, but I would assume that anyone who keeps making up reasons to spend time with you appreciates you a great deal, possibly in a romantic sort of manner. I don’t know much about that myself, but it seems like something that people who love each other would do.”

Jester froze at the mention of the word “love”. She didn’t _love_ Caleb. She certainly liked him, though. She thought he was like, really handsome and sweet, and she daydreamed about him a lot, and she wanted to kiss him and hold his hands and run her fingers through his hair, and her breath definitely caught a little bit whenever he took his shirt off for only healing purposes, and her heart totally swelled when he cracked silly jokes with her, and when he smiled at her with his real smile she couldn’t help but smile back because she just … loved him. 

Well.

Huh.

Apparently she loved him.

“Pour the herbs in while it’s still hot,” Caduceus said, drawing Jester back to reality. She obeyed, shaking the bowl full of ground herbs over the wax, trying to spread it evenly. She grabbed a spoon and began mixing, struggling slightly to pull it through the thick goop. Caduceus watched approvingly, shooting another Sacred Flame into the bowl to keep the wax from solidifying. He then slid the tin over, motioning for Jester to pour. 

“Now, we let it cool,” he said, pushing Jester’s tin back away from them and grabbing the bowl to fill his own tin with the excess. 

A few minutes later, Caduceus told Jester the salve was cool enough to move around. She happily screwed the lid back on and began to carry it back to her own bed roll. She took the long way around the hut so she could pass by Caleb and stick the tin between his face and the book he was reading and shake it around a little bit. 

“Caduceus taught me how to make more of the rubby stuff. You know, just in case,” she said, already walking away with a spring in her step. Cause, you know. She loved him. 


	3. trust me, again and again and again

For the first time in a long time, the Mighty Nein found themselves in an actual town, with an actual inn to stay in. Caleb was sitting at his desk, scrawling a spell into one of his books when Beau poked her head in the door announcing that she was going to scope out the bar a little early, if anyone else wanted to join. Fjord gave a polite, “No thank you” and Caleb shook his head side to side and grunted dismissively, trying not to lose concentration.

He had no such luck. As he finished the page he was on and turned to a fresh one, he found it to be already used. Each corner had a little dick in it, all pointing into the center where a hand that was not his had scribbled “HI CALEB!” He sighed, moving onto the next clean page, but even his sharp mind could no longer focus on the archaic words and sigils he was meant to be drawing. He was thinking about Jester, as he often did. 

It had been getting worse recently, which was entirely his fault. After she healed his shoulder a few weeks back, he had been having a lot more injuries. Which is to say he had given into the part of himself which made up injuries so he could spend time with Jester. First a weird elbow, then a pulled muscle over his ribs, then a stiff wrist. He had brought them all to her, asking for aid under the guise of a helpless, squishy wizard. It was stupid, really. He knew that, and he hated that he kept doing it. 

First, it was definitely a waste of Jester’s time. Even though Caleb always insisted that she take the traditional route of bandages and salve instead of healing spells, every time he showed up, he was using up her supplies and taking her away from things that actually mattered.

Second, even if the injuries  _ had _ been as bad as he claimed, it wasn’t as if his teen years weren’t spent learning how to handle pain far worse than that without shedding a tear. 

Third, he was leading himself on. Even though they cracked a few jokes most times, and sometimes she’d raise her eyebrows and purse her lips and flirt a little as she said them, he knew better than to expect anything more. He knew better than to feel her touch on his skin as she worked and to long for it to linger, to stay, to deepen. He knew better than to take his sweet time getting up to leave, hoping that she would ask him to stay a little longer. He knew better than to try and catch her gaze as she laughed at something he’d said, and to pray that she would look at him and only him with that same glint in her eyes for the rest of his life.

He knew better than to let himself fall for her, but that was a bridge long crossed. Now, he had to simply live with longing and hoping and praying, and the knowledge that he neither deserved nor earned what he was pretending to have. Gods, though. Even though he was just scrabbling at scraps, he would gladly sustain himself on this and this alone. She was that good, and he was that selfish. 

Speaking of which, his finger was a little sore from all the writing he’d been doing. He had better get that taken care of before he messed up his joints. 

* * *

“Come iiiiiiiiiiin,” Jester called, and Caleb pushed open the door to her room at the inn. “Oh, Caleb, always a pleasure. Do you need something?”

“I am sorry to bother you, Jester, but.” He held up his hand and wiggled the fingers.

“Squishy wizard syndrome?”

“Ja, squishy wizard syndrome.”

Jester motioned towards her bed with one hand, already reaching for the haversack with the other. “Have a seat over there. I’ll come look at you.”

He followed her gesture, shutting the door gently behind him and making a path towards the bed. He sat obediently at the edge, already holding his hand out towards her as she crossed the room, swinging the pink backpack at her side.

“Such a gentleman, Caleb, inviting me to bed like this,” Jester said, reaching for his hand with her own free one before she sat, like a rich woman guided onto her carriage seat. 

“I should hope every man who invites you to bed is a gentleman. I don’t want any scoundrels propositioning you, Lavorre.”

“But of course,” Jester said, throwing on a heavy posh accent and tossing her head hautily, hand still in Caleb’s. “Although, I must say,” she continued, switching back to her regular voice, “there are some scoundrels who I might make an exception for.”

Caleb found himself at a loss for words, unsure of what to make of that, and Jester used this pause to pull Caleb’s hand closer to her face and inspect it. Grabbing his fingertips ever so gently, she turned his hand to its palm, then to its back, then to its palm again. Using her thumb, she pushed his fingers flat against her grip. She studied them, with all their scars and callouses, running her thumb lazily along them everyone once in a while.

It was enough to nearly kill Caleb on the spot; this tender silence, her hands on his, not harsh but careful. It was everything he hoped for when he came to Jester, and everything he knew he wasn’t supposed to have.

“Where does it hurt?” she asked after some time, implying that she had been unable to locate the injury. Or possibly, improbably, that she hadn’t been looking for one that whole time.

“This one,” Caleb said, wiggling his pointer finger. “It is from my pens when I write, I think.”

“Mmm,” Jester responded, squinting her eyes as she thought. “Do you have to write much more today?”

“Nein, nothing that cannot wait.”

“Alright, I’m going to wrap this to your middle finger to steady it. It should help, uh, take off some of the pressure to your joint. And also remind you not to write so hard. Cause you won’t be able to write,” Jester bullshitted. 

She set Caleb’s hand to rest on her knee while she dug through the haversack for the med kit, and then through the med kit for the bandages. She picked his hand back up then, cradling it in one of hers as she pushed his last two fingers down and out of the way. She began to wind the roll of bandages around the other two. She pulled them up, over, and around, up, over, and around in a manner that Caleb might describe as painfully slow if he wasn’t taking in every second of contact with Jester like it was his last breath.

When Jester decided she had wrapped successfully, she tore end of the bandage off the roll and slipped the tail in between some of the layers. She grabbed Caleb’s hand again, turning it over for a final check. She began to loosen her grip on it, then stopped. Something was different this time, in a room to themselves instead of under the hut with the rest of their friends a glance away. It was more personal, more intimate, and she was having a very hard time keeping her mind on just cleric things. In a split second, she had pulled his fingers towards her lips and was placing a soft kiss to Caleb’s knuckles.

“For good luck,” she said, letting Caleb’s hand fall. 

He looked at it in shock, cheeks beginning to redden.

“Well, you know, my mama always said there was extra healing magic in a kiss, and like I thought it was just something mamas said but then I got the power to do actual healing magic, so maybe there is something to it,” she explained to Caleb’s wide-eyed stare. “And if there isn’t, well, I don’t think a little kiss is going to  _ hurt _ .”

“N-nein,” he stuttered. “Did not hurt at all.” He was still staring at his fingers, turning them over with a revenant awe that made Jester wonder if she really had cast a spell. Then he stopped, dropping his hand and raising his gaze to meet Jester’s. “If that’s all, I’ll be, ah, going. Thank you, as always.” He stood, movement stiff, and turned towards the door, pacing quickly away. 

“Caleb, wait!” Jester called, grabbing at his coat sleeve to keep him from getting too far.

He turned back towards her with an expectant look.

“Your, uh, your cheeks are red,” Jester said, rising to stand alongside him and placing a hand on his chest to steady him. She kept talking before she could decide this was a bad idea. “I think there’s something wrong with them. I should do something about that too, maybe?”

She glanced up at him, searching for a sign in his face that he didn’t want this, didn’t want her, and found none. She pressed up onto her toes and planted two more small kisses on him, one on each bright red cheek. She pulled back, lowering back down to her normal height as she felt her own face begin to blush.

“Jester,” Caleb whispered, and placed his bandaged hand on top of her own, which was still pressed to his chest, just over his heart. He was sure she could feel it beating faster and he wondered when he fell asleep because this was a dream, surely. 

He studied her face, just inches below his. Every freckle was in place, her eyes the exact right shade of violet. There was nothing to suggest this Jester was not real, but then again, he had spent long enough sneaking glances at her that his subconscious very well could have had her memorized. He reached out his other hand, brushing the knuckles against her cheek. It felt like her skin. He pulled his lower lip into his mouth, biting down lightly. It hurt a little. If the pain was real, there was a chance that all of this, somehow, was real. 

“Caleb,” Jester murmured. “You’re biting at your lip. Is that hurt too?” She reached up to brush her fingertips across it, but he turned his head ever so slightly out of her reach.

“You do not, you  _ should _ not -” Caleb started, taking a half step back.

She grabbed at his bandaged hand, holding it in both of hers and drawing it towards her. “Hey,  _ I’m _ the designated cleric here, ok? You bring me an injury and I heal it. I know what I should and shouldn’t do. Do you trust me?”

This was the “more” that Caleb had thought he’d never be blessed enough to receive. This was a touch that would stay on him for as long as he cared to remember it. This was her asking him to stay. This was the look in her eye that he prayed to see again, and who knows how long it would last, but if he could extend its time by even a second longer it would be worth it. This was everything he had dared to desire and failed to believe, and she had asked him a very simple question.

“Jester Lavorre, I trust you,” he said, and let her kiss him.

He was nearly thrown backwards by the fierceness with which Jester pressed her lips to his. He should have known better than to expect this to be soft or chaste. When was Jester ever the type of girl to ease into something? She always dove in head first, whether it was to mischief or battle or love. It’s one of the things that drew Caleb to her the most.

Jester pulled away then, and Caleb leaned forwards ever so slightly as she did, trying to hang onto the feeling of her for one more millisecond. 

“Did that help?”.

“You have no idea,” he answered.

“Oh man,” she said, tilting her head as she studied Caleb’s full face, still flushed pink. “And here I was, hoping I’d need to heal you some more.”

A smirk pulled at her lips, and a similar one began to form on Caleb. He made a show of biting his lip once more and pulling it loose from his teeth.

“Ow.”

Jester tossed her head back in a laugh. “I guess I’ll have to try harder this time. Do you still trust me, Caleb?”

“Of course I do,” he said, already leaning down to meet her.

She tugged at his shirt with one hand while they kissed, drawing both of them back down to the bed. Her other hand remained clasped around his bandaged one. 

“I want to keep healing you,” Jester said, pulling back just far enough to whisper against Caleb’s mouth. “And I want you to keep trusting me.” 

Jester used the hand still fisted in Caleb’s shirt to guide him down onto the mattress, laying him flat on his back with her above him. She was still holding one of his hands, his arm bent to the side to be about level with his head. As she talked, she laced her fingers with Caleb’s. They fit into each other rather awkwardly, given that she had bound two of his fingers together. Neither of them cared.

“I want you to trust me again,” she said, and she kissed him. “And again.” She kissed him. “And again, and again, and again,” she said between more kisses. 

“Ja,” Caleb murmured, lips brushing Jester’s and hand squeezing hers as he spoke, “I think I can do that.”

And he kissed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hehe tender :^)
> 
> hope you enjoyed!!! 
> 
> please comment or leave kudos if you are so inclined, and you're also free to hit up my tumblr cadykeus-clay and chat if you wanna get emo about widojest or another ship or cr in general


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